David Maddox: PES off Socialism

It turns out that the Party of European Socialists (PES), the European Parliament's block of leftwing and centre left parties including Labour is going out of business after the election this June.
It is due to re-emerge as the Alliance of Social Democrats (ASD) when MEPs return to Brussels and Strasbourg after the election.
Why is this? Well it seems that none of the parties represented in that pan-European grouping are socialists any more.
This will come as no surprise to anybody who has watched Labour's march rightwards since the mid-1990s, the ditching of clause 4 and the red flag, and the birth of New Labour.
So we won't need the "real" socialists like Tommy Sheridan (Solidarity) or Colin Fox (Scottish Socialist Party) and their fellow Trots to say "I told you so."
Interestingly, as far as the election on June 4 goes, ASD would also be the natural home for the Scottish Nationalists, except Labour keeps vetoing their membership as one SNP spin doctor pointed out to me. Added to that the the leaders of PES/ ASD hope that the new arrangement will encourage the Greens to join them making them the largest group in the European Parliament. Currently the European Greens are part of the same small group as the SNP - The European Free Alliance (EFA).
And you would have thought that now they are all officially social democrats the group might be an appropriate home for Britain's Lib Dem MEPs, although currently they exist in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe or ALDE which sounds like an appropriately European retailer of cheap goods.
But it all goes to show that essentially four of the five parties represented in Holyrood in European terms appear to be different flavours of the same thing.
Which, in main party terms, leaves us only with the Conservatives. They were part of the European People's Party (EPP) - the Centre Right coalition and biggest in the parliament - until David Cameron decided it was "too pro-European" and went off to form a fringe grouping called the European Democrats (ED).
Confused? Just wait until the election on June 4.